The world of foreign aid is no longer what it was two weeks ago—the revelations we are hearing from the new U.S. administration turn upside down the perception that some people had regarding foreign assistance, Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said in a conversation with journalists.

According to him, every donor country is now under suspicion and has the burden of proof to demonstrate to the Georgian people, through transparency and publicity, how the funds they allocated were spent.

"The U.S. administration has criticized the spending of money from its own budget under the umbrella of foreign aid more strictly, clearly, and explicitly than we have ever done. It has effectively exposed schemes that they themselves call fraudulent, criminal, and harmful. Trump's executive order also identified these funds as having been used for the destabilization of other countries. Against this backdrop, all donor countries are now under suspicion. It is impossible that this issue concerns only U.S. budget expenditures. Naturally, other countries involved also raise justified suspicions that the same harmful goals may have been pursued as those identified with U.S. budget spending.

Therefore, the silence we see from other embassies and donors is unacceptable—their attempt to ignore the issue as if nothing has happened regarding foreign aid. No, the world has changed, and the taboo they had placed on foreign aid is no longer there. That is why every donor country is now under suspicion and must prove, with transparency and openness, how their allocated funds were spent. Moreover, we do not just have suspicions; we have evidence that, apart from American funds, EU member states and European foundations were also funding destabilization in Georgia.

The European Endowment for Democracy is the most striking example of this—a fund that, using intelligence service methods, secretly finances radical political parties and radical groups," Papuashvili said.

According to him, he expects all donor organizations and states—whether Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, the European Union, or any other country spending money in Georgia—to act in the same way as the new U.S. administration is doing now.